


What does sleeping together mean?

by Coriandr



Category: Teen Titans (Comics)
Genre: Cute, F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-16
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-08-02 20:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,522
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16312421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coriandr/pseuds/Coriandr
Summary: How Raven and Koriand'r go from friends to close friends to much more!





	What does sleeping together mean?

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted some cuteness about the two of them getting together, especially infused with Kory's copious confusion about Earth customs.

Koriand’r woke fighting with her sheets, just short of screaming. Dreaming again about captivity and being experimented on. She was out of her bed, pacing down to the second floor rec room before she thought about it. She needed to move, feel her freedom. She should fly, but pacing the library first seemed wise.

Raven sat curled into the armchair reading a book. She glanced up and blinked. “You’re scared,” she said.

“Nightmares. Trapped on that ship again.”

“Do you want me to help? I can calm you.”

“I’m … I’ll be all right. I need to fly.”

“You should probably put on some clothes first.”

Koriand’r looked down her body and sighed. Humans. Flying would be more glorious naked. Raven was pressing her lips together, trying not to smile, but Kory wanted to see that smile, so she grinned as best she could despite the memories and nightmare, and watched Raven’s lips curve up in response.

Clothes on, Kory flew around the city in the soft darkness until the reality of her freedom seeped into her bones. When she got back to the tower, Raven was still up reading.

“Did I wake you?” Kory asked, knowing Raven could sometimes feel her nightmares.

“I was up. Sometimes it’s hard to fall asleep here. The city can be so loud.”

Kory didn’t hear anything other than a distant siren. “Inside your mind?”

Raven nodded.

“Why don’t you come sleep in my bed?” Kory suggested.

“I … what?”

“Come with me and calm my mind and then I will hold the calm for you. I will be the calm loudly so it covers the other emotions. I think this can be done, yes? And then we’ll both sleep.”

Closing her book, Raven said, “Actually that’s better than any idea I’ve had so far. You don’t mind? Do people get in bed together all the time on Tamaran?”

“Yes. They don’t at your temple?”

“Never.”

“I am sorry. Come, I’ll show you how we share a bed for comfort.”

After that they slept in Kory’s bed once a week, sometimes twice. Either because Raven was having trouble falling asleep or because she felt Kory’s nightmares and went to her.

Usually Raven was the little spoon when they curled up together, but sometimes she got to be the big spoon, which she also liked, even though it meant waking up with a mouthful of Kory’s hair.

Raven tried not to over-analyze the arrangement. Even when she woke up warm and happy because Kory was pressed naked along the length of her back. Kory seemed mellow about it all, so there wasn’t that much to worry about.

Some months later, magic went awry and a small fireball to exploded in her room, making in unliveable for a few days.

In the kitchen that afternoon, Robin asked, “Do you want the guest room for the rest of the week? I know it’s small but at least it has a bed.”

Before Raven could respond, Kory said, off-handedly, “It’s okay, Raven is sleeping with me.”

“Whoa!” Gar said. “I want to be a fly on the wall.”

Robin looked shocked. Raven wanted to put her face in her hands, but relied of her years of training, solid discipline to say, patiently to Kory, “For humans ‘sleeping with’ is a euphemism for having sex.”

“Oh. We are only sharing a bed sometimes,” Kory told Robin. “Not sex.”

“It would be okay if there was sex,” Gar said. “Totally okay, especially if we knew about it. You can tell us that kind of stuff. We’re all friends here.”

“No you can’t,” Robin said.

“Not to worry,” Kory told him cheerfully. “I haven’t learned enough of your human customs to have sex with you.”

His shocked look got a shocked look.

“I think you mean you haven’t learned enough to have sex with any human,” Raven suggested. “Not that you haven’t learned enough to have sex with Robin.”

“Oh yes, I’m not asking to have sex with you. Was that unclear? Humans and Tamaraneans fight similarly, but you are so strange about sex. I would not have sex with just any human. Sex is better with friends.”

Raven turned to Robin, who was still trying to remember how to close his mouth. “I don’t think I’ll need the guest room. Kory could clearly use more tutoring on how humans talk about sex.”

*

  
Over time, Raven couldn’t deny how she felt about Kory. She could control it, of course, push it down and wall it around with discipline. Until the next time she got into bed with Kory’s warm, lush, naked body—and then she didn’t sleep at all.

At the Temple of Azarath, they’d never said if they cared whether she was interested in men, women, aliens, all of the above—their preference for her was none of the above. But they didn’t so much care about attraction as long as she never fostered it or acted on it. Back in this very human dimension, she knew that people carried prejudices about two women, or women-appearing people together. But that was easier to overcome than her training to not engage her passions.

She stopped sleeping in Kory’s room. She ached and missed her and tried to ignored the feelings of loss from Kory.

That lasted for a few weeks until a particularly bad fight against robots infused with the power of an angry sorcerer. They won the fight, but half the Titans were down in the rubble of a building that their enemies had toppled on them. Gar was pinned under a bulk of concrete, but as a triceratops, so as soon as Cyborg and Wonder Girl got it moved half to the side, he transformed and slipped free. Kid Flash ran around to find Robin.

Raven followed the feeling of intense pain to where Kory lay on her back amid broken pieces of building. Kory had used her starbolt energy to change the trajectory of falling building so it didn’t take out any other buildings or kill people. But she’d been hit from behind as she did and thrown into the falling mass. The immense pain in her back and chest meant broken bones at least and a very deep burn.

Raven knelt and reached toward her shoulder, but Kory caught her hand, squeezing her eyes shut against the pain.

“Not too much,” she rasped out the words. “Don’t hurt yourself. I will heal.”

Raven pushed forward, her fingers connecting with Kory’s skin. She drank in the pain, almost to the point of losing consciousness, felt bone and skin kitting together, wavered at the edge of her abilities. Too much, too fast. Falling forward, she blacked out and came aware a moment later, still flush with agony, her head on Kory’s chest. The pain was too much to move, but Kory’s soft skin against her cheek helped, made it bearable.

Kory wrapped her free arm around Raven’s back and held her closer. Raven heard stones moving, and then Kory’s other hand cradled the back of her head.

“Too much,” Kory said, her voice stronger. “I’m tougher than you—physically at least. You should’ve left me more to heal.”

Raven tried to make a sound of agreement, but it came out more pain than affirmation. Tears streamed down her face. The whole middle section of her body felt broken, smashed and burned. How had Kory kept up her starfire while being blasted like this from behind?

Kory shifted, more rocks fell away, and sat up, holding Raven’s head and shoulders gently against her. The movement didn’t make the pain worse. She had no real injuries, only the resonance of the damage she’d healed in Kory. On top of all the exertion from the fight, it was too much. She slipped into blackness again.

And came conscious to the feeling of being settled gently into a bed. She opened her eyes enough to see the familiar gray wall of her room.

“The others?” she asked.

“All reasonably well” Kory told her. “Gar twisted something. Robin has some very excellent bruises and the others have minor injuries. Do you need more than rest? Medicines? Bandages?

“No, this is perfect. Thank you.”

Kory sat on the edge of her bed and Raven couldn’t help reaching for her, resting her fingertips of Kory’s leg. After a moment’s pause, Kory unclasped her boots and kicked them off. She slid into the bed, sitting, and lifted Raven’s head and shoulders to rest in her lap. Her fingers stroked Raven’s hair.

She felt protective and loving, broadcasting it so Raven could rest in the shelter of her strong emotion. For a few minutes she dozed, and woke again to see Kory looking around the room.

“I brought you to your room,” Kory said. “You don’t come to mine anymore. Why?”

“Um, it’s just, we’re growing older, you know, and humans don’t ... adult humans don't ... sharing a bed is very intimate.”

“You don’t want to be intimate with me?” Kory asked and Raven felt a sudden, shocking burst of clear, deep pain from her.

“I do,” Raven said too fast.

“I don’t understand.” Kory put her hand on Raven’s arm. “Are we not adults if we share a bed?”

“It means something different if we’re adults. … Kory, I need to sleep. Could you ask someone else please?”

“Yes, sleep and dream of victory.” Kory shifted but didn’t get up. Raven closed her eyes.

Much later, Kory lifted her and slid out from under, settled Raven back against her pillow. She felt the hot, soft press of Kory’s lips high on her cheek.

*

Koriand’r went first to Robin because of his great, sweeping strategic views. She asked him, “What does it mean when two adults sleep in a bed together repeatedly?”

“If they’re not family, it usually means they’re in a relationship.”

Kory sighed and rubbed the tight muscles in her neck. “Your word ‘relationship’ is meaingless. It’s like saying ‘this is wet’ and then I don’t know if you mean rain or blood or acid.”

“A sexual relationship. How many kinds of relationships on Tamaran involve sex?” he asked.

“Eighteen.”

“What?!”

“So far I have counted four human kinds. You see the translation problem of eighteen to four? With humans it seems to be: sex-for-fun, sex-for-procreation, sex-for-problem-solving and sex-for-connection. You’re saying two adults only share a bed if they are having one of these kinds of human sex?”

“Yes, exactly. Or more than one kind. Like connection and procreation go together,” he said.

“I’ll take your word for it.”

She had many more questions, but he looked pained already so she left.

Next she tried Cyborg. She found him working out and joined him. When they’d established a comfortable rhythm of sparring, she asked, “Can you explain the steps to human relationship with sex-for-connection and intimacy?”

He laughed himself off balance and she accidentally hit him in the face, but on the metal side and not very hard. She let him hit her back in the stomach. He was still laughing.

When he could talk, he said, “There’s two ways you can start. Either you figure out if he likes you or you just ask him out on a date and see if he says yes.”

“Okay, go on.” Kory found this complex enough that she didn’t bother to change the pronoun. She didn’t see why it would matter; the steps should be the same to a starting a relationship.

“Uh, well then if he says yes you go on a date, which is usually dinner, maybe a movie, walking around, holding hands, talking. And at the end he might kiss you. Then you have another date, and after a bunch of dates if you really like each other, things get more sexual.”

“What if we have this date and the other person doesn’t kiss me?” Kory asked.

“Well if you think he likes you but he didn’t kiss you, maybe he’s going slow. You flirt and have more dates. Why, how would you do it on Tamaran?”

“We would already have spent much time together and then one of us would say, ‘I like you very much are you available for—this is a poor translation—sex-for-connection-of-friends and if the other one says yes, we have that for a time maybe it becomes the sex-for-connection-of-lovers or any other of the intimate bonds.”

“You just ask? For sex? Hm, imagine that.”

“I have trouble imagining why you don’t ask,” Kory said, but that got Cyborg laughing again.

So she went to Donna, who she probably should’ve started with and asked, “What are the human rules around flirting?”

“What are the Tamaranean rules?” Donna asked back.

“Don’t draw blood,” Kory said and grinned because she could joke a little with Donna and sometimes Donna even got the joke.

“All right then. Look if you want to show some guy you like him, just laugh at his jokes, touch him a lot in little ways, smile, eye contact, oh and do thoughtful things or little gifts, those are an easy sign of affection. He’ll probably make the next move.”

“What if this isn’t a ‘he’ but human customs still apply?”

“I should have you call Diana, she grew up with all women, she knows everything about that. But from what I’ve gathered it’s pretty similar except you might have to be the one to initiate the first kiss. Do you know if she likes women?”

“She seems to like me.”

“There you go. Spend time, flirt and if she keeps responding, maybe kiss her. Good luck. This isn’t easy even for humans.”

“It isn’t easy _because of_ humans,” Kory said. “Sometimes I miss home.”

*

Raven sat in the rec room reading, again. Because the city was loud and she wasn’t going to crawl into Kory’s bed and feel her body burn with desire all night long. And because her bedroom was right across the hall from Kory’s she felt too much. She’d considered sleeping in the basement, but that would raise questions.

Steps on the stairs. Kory came in looking exhausted.

“I thought the nightmares were better,” Raven said.

“They are. You didn’t come up to your room.”

“It’s a good book,” she said, but not looking up, fairly sure Kory would know that wasn’t the reason. Kory might not have empathic powers, but having grown up in a very emotionally expressive culture, she could be startlingly good at reading body language and facial expressions.

“Raven.”

She made herself look up and realized that Kory was in a surprisingly demure outfit for her. She had a long sleep-shirt on, elbow-length sleeves, bottom hem hanging almost to her knees and the suggestion of shorts under it.

“What am I doing wrong?” Kory asked.

Raven was about to say “nothing” when she realized she had no idea what the question was about. “Wrong in what context? What are you trying to do?”

“Robin said that sharing a bed goes with sex-for-connection and then Vic told me about human dating customs but I think that applies better for people who don’t live in the same tower. And Donna said I should bring gifts and I … I think I’m doing this wrong.”

Very slowly fragments of thought and memory came together in Raven’s mind. She’d thought the flowers were from Gar and the pastries from Donna. “The flowers on my desk came from you? And the pastries in the fridge that Gar ate most of?”

“Yes.”

“And you did my chores. I thought that was just a thank you,” as she talked, Raven’s brain almost got the pieces together: dating customs and gifts? What did that mean?

She knew what she wanted it to mean but was afraid both of that being true and of it being false. Afraid that Kory didn’t feel this way, and not daring to try to read her emotions about it, and almost more afraid that she did.

Kory said, “Donna told me I’m supposed to laugh at your jokes, but you don’t make any. And to look in your eyes and touch you, but that seemed backwards to be touching you a lot before I know if you want that. Do I have the human customs wrong or is this because you’re half-human? Am I courting you wrong?”

“You’re … courting me?” Raven did not have any words to cut through her confusion or deal with the growing sense of hope and desire in her.

Kory said a long string of words in Tamaranean that sounded like swearing but ended with a very English, “I am doing it wrong.”

She crossed the room to the foot of Raven’s chair and sat, looking up at her. Raven had her feet tucked up and Kory leaned against the chair, very close to her but not touching. Kory looked alarmingly wistful and nervous for a person who would fly around the city naked for the joy of it if no one reminded her to get dressed.

Kory said, “You have been my battle-friend and bed-friend. I’m joyful around you. I think you feel joy with me. And we have both been sad these last weeks being further apart. With my whole heart, I invite you to my bed again, as adults with a bond that includes, if you like, sex-for-connection. Only tell me what you need for it to be right and I’ll do this.”

“Oh,” Raven said and couldn’t think of another word for a very long time. She looked down into Kory’s green eyes and felt that she was falling into them. At last she managed to say, “You’re asking me out? I don’t really know how to date either. Maybe we could blend the human customs and the Tamaranean way. Do you think we can?”

“You want to try? With me?” A bright, joyful smile broke across Kory’s golden face.

“Oh yes. I … yes. I was afraid you didn’t feel the same.”

“Can’t you tell?” Kory asked, but then her eyes widened. “You can’t. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“What?”

“You rescued me. I have felt some form of joy about you since I first saw you. And you’re beautiful and as I come to know you, that joy deepens, it shifts, it has become the joy of close companions. But I think you always feel joy from me about you, like a background, you haven’t distinguished how it changed, how I’ve come to feel about you.”

“I thought that was just your natural state.”

“This is my natural state,” Kory said and sat quietly for a moment in a light-hearted contentment. And then, “This is how I feel with you.”

Waves of care, delight, bright joyfulness, protection—Raven gasped and put a hand on Kory’s shoulder because she had to touch, to get closer and wrap herself in those feelings. Kory put her fingers over Raven’s.

“Is this similar to how you feel with me?”

Raven nodded, tried to pull herself together enough to make words again. “Yes but also I’m scared. I don’t know how to date or have a relatinship. And I’m definitely not ready for everything yet.”

“We don’t start with everything,” Kory said, grinning. “We start where we were. Will you come to bed with me only to sleep, in a dating-but-not-sex way tonight?”

“I’d love to.”

Kory beamed. She slipped her arms around Raven and lifted her out of the chair.

Raven laughed at the feeling of sudden weightlessness and being in Kory’s arms. She pressed her face to Kory’s shoulder, the scent of her hair around them. Kory carried her up the stairs and then paused at her door, fumbling with the doorknob, so Raven teleported them into the room.

Kory laughed, glanced over her shoulder at the closed door. She set Raven gently on her feet but kept one hand lightly on her waist.

“If we had a human date, I would kiss you by the door. I saw this on television. Does it matter if we’re no longer on the outside of the door? Is it wrong to kiss inside?”

“No, this is perfect,” Raven said, soft and breathless because the reality of Kory being there beside her, being about to kiss her, felt very heavy in her chest.

Kory turned so they faced each other fully and put her fingertips on Raven’s cheek. Thinking Kory was about to kiss her, Raven closed her eyes, held her breath. Instead, Kory put her warm, soft cheek on Raven’s, and whispered, “I have never kissed anyone either. I am also afraid, but in a good way.”

Raven had her hands on Kory’s waist, not sure how they got there, and had been mostly holding herself steady, but now she slid one around to Kory’s back. She spread her fingers, feeling the thin fabric of the sleep shirt moving over Kory’s muscles.

“I’m glad I get to be your first too,” Raven whispered.

Kory made a low sound of approval. She brushed her cheek along Raven’s and then her lips followed the line of Raven’s cheekbone. Raven turned her head and found Kory’s lips with hers.

 


End file.
